The Science of Strong Women - Rhiannon Lee

Author: Rhiannon Lee

Illustrator: Alice Needham

Genre: Nonfiction, Feminism.

Rating; 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Great intent. Decent research. Half-baked execution. Nothing “science” in the content.

Let’s begin with the structure. The book begins with an introductory note on the history of feminism and then goes into iconic “feminist” characters from fiction – books as well as movies/TV shows. Thus spotlighted are fifty characters from a variety of genres, time periods, and backgrounds. The main content is divided into eleven sections depending on the role the character is most known for. Thus we have “Teenage Drama Queens”, “Fierce Females of Fantasy”, “Wonderful Warrior Women”, and so on. Each section contains a character sketch of a few characters, with a mostly fixed pattern for each sketch.

1. A grayscale illustration of the character – The illustrations were mostly good. Many of them were based on the actresses who played the parts in the movies (Katniss Everdeen, Matilda Wormwood, Sabrina Spellman) but in a few cases, the portraits don’t resemble the actress. (Hermione Granger, Jo March) I don’t like such inconsistency. Hermione’s depiction seems to have been based on the idea of her being Black as written in “The Cursed Child’, but that book isn’t even part of the official Harry Potter canon, and c’mon – you think Hermione, you think Emma Watson! It was an iconic performance. Why this decision then?

(If you are curious to see how Hermione was sketched, just enlarge the cover image – the character inside the S of “strong” is Hermione.)

2. One of the character’s iconic quotes – pretty interesting for most characters.

3. “Lesson Learned” – A one-liner author’s opinion on one lesson we can learn from this character. This was an important key to understanding the rest of the content, because some of the selected characters were quite surprising. But the lesson the author chose to focus on helps us understand why they are present in the book.

4. “Plot” - A plot summation of the fictional work they are part of.

5. “Feminist Icon” – This section details out the reasons the character made an impact on the author. When a book has been adapted into a movie, the information takes inputs from both sources, which results in some inconsistences. The heading didn’t suit the content of this section, which comprised almost entirely of the author’s rationale as to why the character was a “feminist icon”. However, there is a fair amount of judgement clearly visible. (Details below.) I guess one person’s “feminist icon” is another person’s “clichéd character”.

6. “About the Author” – Contained some intriguing (and sometimes shocking) facts about the author who brought that character to life. Again, the content isn’t unbiased. (Details below.)

7. “Facts” - (First off - Why call this “facts”? Was the rest of the content just fiction? Why not “Trivia”?) This contains some titbits of information related to the movie/book, the character, or the actress playing the character.

As you can see, the structure is impactful and definitely contains some thought-provoking content. But I hope you noticed one item glaring in its absence: “Science”. Unlike what the title suggests, there’s nothing about the science of the character, and the analysis is entirely personal than scientific. (This stays valid even if I include the social sciences.) The title is thus somewhat of a misnomer. I admit, I picked this book up more for the science than for the supposedly feminist content. So this was disappointing.

Where the book worked for me:

👉 It doesn’t just cover the obvious female superheroes but regular everyday female characters. There are plenty of expected characters such as Jo March and Nancy Drew but also some unexpected ones such as Wilhelmina Harker from ‘Dracula’, Eowyn from the LOTR series, Tracy Turnblad from ‘Hairspray’, and Wednesday Addams from ‘The Addams Family’. There are a couple of trans women characters also included. (I would have loved to see more, but fiction has yet to have really strong representation of trans people that would have fit the ’feminist” bill.)

👉 I loved how the author included female characters from the classics too, and added this note in the introduction: “The time in history and the places in which these characters exist are key to understanding what makes them strong women. With our views on feminism and gender constantly evolving, what made sense two hundred years ago can seem wildly outdated by today’s standards.” Exactly! If only the reviewers of today remembered this while reviewing classics – always judge a book based on when it was written, not by when you read it!

👉 The point that is raised about these characters not being perfect but having ONE quality that is admirable is spot on. As the author herself says, “there is no perfect fictional feminist. These are all flawed characters who have one or a few stand-out traits.” If we read the content keeping this point in mind, the book becomes a lot more tolerable.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

👉 The characters are supposedly from a variety of backgrounds. But the fact is, a majority of them are white! Most are straight. There’s no LGBTQ+ rep except for two trans characters.

👉 The authors are predominantly white, and the fictional works are almost all from the USA or the UK. It indirectly depicts how limited the reading/viewing of this author is. Few might have heard of Sister Sara from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana's Dream” or Rajani from the 1980s TV show of the same name, but how can Lisbeth Salander from Steig Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” or Olanna (or even Kainene) from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun” not make the cut? The author mentions in the foreword “[…] shows how obsessive my consumption of strong fictional women is!” Well, all I can say is, you do need to diversify this consumption, dear author! The world is much larger than what you think.

👉 The author claims that reading lists in schools are filled with books written “by white men, for white men.” Not exactly accurate, is this? There are so many classics written by women (The Bronte sisters, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen,…) that are a part of essential reading lists. Also, when the very next page after this sentence has the character sketch of Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “A Scarlet Letter”, isn’t the point invalidated?

👉 Unlike what the title suggests, being a strong woman is not the same as being a feminist. The characters included in the book are strong in various ways, I agree. But many of these were simply outstanding female characters and had nothing to do with being a feminist. So the “Feminist Icon” section does a lot of twisting around to fit them into the feminist mould. Thus:

↳ It includes Scout Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird” as a feminist. If you ask me, Atticus Finch was more of a feminist than Scout was.

↳ Katniss Everdeen is included for her “great ability to communicate and foster relationships” – SO not true!! She’s a feminist for very different reasons. And please, she didn’t “pine over a boy”? Her actions in the final book of the trilogy are entirely dominated by her feelings for Peeta.

↳ Anne of Green Gables was an iconic character only in the first two books. Then she settles into domesticity, leaving her dreams of becoming a teacher behind. This is conveniently ignored.

↳ Okoye from “Black Panther” is chosen over STEM icon Shuri, just because the former fits into the “badass tomboy” mould that the author so clearly admires.

👉 The info related to authors isn’t comprehensive and again, highly prejudiced. For instance, Enid Blyton’s racist tendencies are included but J.K. Rowling’s controversial transphobic remarks are skipped. Roald Dahl’s bigotry is referred to in a single sentence but Lewis Carroll’s alleged paedophilia is completely ignored. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s highly racist portrayal of colonial India is glossed over. (As is the fact that she hadn’t ever visited India but wrote the initial section of ‘The Secret Garden’ based on what she presumed about “the colonies”.)

👉 The kind of feminism advocated is the one that looks down on dresses and the colour pink and homemakers. For instance, George from the Famous Five series is said to have inspired the author to join the Boy Scouts as they got to “sleep outdoors, play with axes, and build campfires, while the Girl Scouts would have sleepovers in the village hall, and make crafts.” What’s the problem with that? One can be a girly girl and still be a feminist! Ironically, Elle Woods from the Legally Blonde series gets a proud mention in the list, with the lesson derived from her being “Having an interest in frivolous things doesn’t make you stupid.” Someone had selective amnesia while writing about George and Scout Finch!

(Speaking of Elle Woods, I would have loved to see the author’s opinion on “feminist icon” Elle’s ‘Bend and Snap’ routine.)

👉 Pride and Prejudice is NOT a ‘romantic novel’! That’s such a literal reading of the text!

👉 I would have loved to have some insight on the author’s background. There’s nothing about her in the book. Some bookstore sites mention her bio as, ‘Rhiannon Lee holds a PhD in chemistry and is a strong campaigner for the recognition of women in science.’ If this is true, then the author lost an opportunity to make this book more fact-oriented and science-oriented, and less like a Wikipedia of her favourite characters.

All in all, this is a book that promises a lot and tries to do a lot. But forcing a generic character into a feminist mould has led to many goofs. Plus, the blatant bias for and against a few authors, and the lack of global representation makes the experience less memorable. Twisting the author’s own words, this is clearly written by a white woman for Western straight (mostly white) women, and even they won’t necessarily like it.

My thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Science of Strong Women: The True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fictional Feminists”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.